US Open 2011 Photos

I haven't been here in so long because of going to the US Open, being sick for a week afterwards and my brother's computer giving him problems. I'm going to have so much catching up to do with all my blog friends. I have started my picture project of this event and just wanted to share some of the better ones with you all. It seems like I am a bit obsessive with the picture taking when I'm at these matches but for every 10 photos I take only a couple come out good. The first 3 are of my favourite player, Austria's Jurgen Melzer. I kind of semi stalked him after the match and got the one of him with a couple of other people having their photo taken with him. The Juan Carlos Ferrero ones didn't come out that great because it was night time. You aren't really supposed to use a flash while they are playing. The bottom photo is of the guy who first got me into tennis 5 years ago - Tommy Haas. I missed part of his match because I was watching all of the Petzschner 5 set one - should've left after the 4th.

Because of Hurricane Irene our power was out for 4 days and we were unable to recharge our batteries until Wednesday night. If I had been more conservative with the picture taking on Monday my 2 batteries probably would have lasted all of the first 2 days but they were dead by Tuesday afternoon. I had a regular 35mm camera and film with me just in case this happened but unfortunately wasn't even able to use it because I forgot that it takes a special battery and had waited until we got to the tennis center to put batteries in it - it takes 1 lithium, not AA. If I had grabbed our 80's camera too, I could have at least used this even though there isn't any zoom on it, not that the zoom on the 90s one is that good.

At first in the bus terminal - we couldn't take the train because service of New Jersey transit was suspended- I bought 2 of those disposable digital cameras at one store. They were kind of expensive- 45.oo for 2. I went into another store, saw the 4 pack of film which I bought then returned the disposable ones which I totally regret now. I obviously was not thinking clearly during this whole day. It turns out that it would have been cheaper to get like 6 of those disposable ones than it was the way that I did things. I had all the film put on a discs so I'd be able to send the best shots to the computer than to Walgreens photo to have printed out. I had put off looking at them because I feared that there would be alot of crappy shots which turned out to be right. Very disappointing.

This whole camera incident feels like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone as does the fact that we were the only block in our small town to actually lose power during that Hurricane. We had to throw out like 80.00 worth of meats and dairy products. I'm just glad that I was smart enough to think to charge all our batteries on Saturday so at least we were able to take digital photos on Monday and part of Tuesday. It's been like 6 years since I've last used a regular camera. I didn't go digital until the end 0f 2008. I can't believe that I resisted the technology for so long. And I also looked into the bus schedule on Saturday because I was afraid that the trains might not be running. We had to walk 15 minutes to the bus stop which we wound up doing for the 5 days. We weren't even sure when the trains starting running again. The money that I saved on parking in the train lot wound up going towards the film but that was only a small portion of what I wound up throwing away because of the power outage. Things could have been much worse so I shouldn't even complain. We didn't get the flooding like many towns in Jersey did. And thank goodness that New York had their subway system up and running in time for us to get out to Queens to attend this event.

I hope that everyone has been well lately. I will have much more on our US Open experience in the future. It's nice to be back here. I'm looking forward to reading and commenting on your posts.